Some new designs of mobile communication devices—such as smart phones, tablet computers, and laptop computers—contain multiple Subscriber Identity Modules (SIM) that provide users with access to multiple separate mobile telephony networks using multiple radio access technologies (RATs). Examples of RATS include GSM, TDSCDMA, CDMA2000, and WCDMA. Example multi-SIM mobile communication devices include mobile phones, laptop computers, smart phones, and other mobile communication devices that are enable to connect to multiple mobile telephony networks.
With the increased sophistication of mobile computing devices and increased bandwidth of cellular networks, service providers are able to offer a very broad range of services beyond supporting voice calls. Consequently, data plans from service providers are becoming increasingly flexible and complex, evolving from the simplistic initial plans of a specified number of minutes of connect time per month, for example, to encompass total bandwidth use and types of services. It is anticipated that service providers will be interested in offering additional types of services and billing plans that are connected to specific applications activated on or registered for use with individual mobile computing devices. However, coordinating services and billing at the application layer will require service providers to have insight into the applications running on communication devices. Currently, service providers can gain such insight through deep packet inspection, which requires significant network processing and has user-privacy implications.